We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating. As with Sputnik, the national security implications of these incidents are concerning — but the scientific opportunities are thrilling. Who knows what perils we may avoid or opportunities we might identify if we follow the data? We cannot afford to avert our eyes, given the risk of strategic surprise. The future belongs to not only the physically brave but also the intellectually agile.

In December, reports Christopher Mellon in today's The Washington Post, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administration.

The images and video below is from a recently declassified Defense Department video captured by an F/A-18 military jet of an unidentified flying object moving at high speed.

The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.

The video, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest .

Is it possible that America has been technologically leap-frogged by Russia or China? Or, as many people wondered after the videos were first published by the New York Times in December, might they be evidence of some alien civilization.

Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.

Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"I know from numerous discussions with Pentagon officials over the past two years," he writes, "that military departments and agencies treat such incidents as isolated events rather than as part of a pattern requiring serious attention and investigation. A colleague of mine at To the Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, used to run a Pentagon intelligence program that examined evidence of 'anomalous' aircraft, but he resigned last fall to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data."